Monkey Man hysteria is spreading

By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi

12:00AM BST 24 May 2001

HYSTERIA over India's "Monkey Man", blamed for a range of attacks and two deaths in New Delhi, has spread hundreds of miles to neighbouring Rajasthan.

Residents across the Nagaur district, more than 220 miles west of the capital, claim to have seen an apparition, described as a cross between a huge monkey and a computerised robot. They have formed neighbourhood defence committees.

Although, as in Delhi, there have been no confirmed sightings of the creature, Niranjan Arya, Nagaur district head, has deployed a team of forest rangers to trap it.